Tim

I know Mark answered this question on the boards before. If you do a creative search with mlpeel as the poster, I think you can probably find the answer.

No love for Sing or Patterson?

NSBB is going to be starting a new tradition in 2005 by awarding a Player of the Year award and donating $100 to Cubs Care or the charity of choice for that player. Some of the seasons will be ending soon and our ability to reach the players will be over, so this needs to be done soon. The process is going to look like this: Please make your case for your favorite player in this thread. This will serve as the nomination process. Players can be added here until Friday night, 11:59 pm central time. A poll will be created that will run through the weekend. Everyone will have a chance to vote on the players Saturday through Monday night at 11:59 pm central time. The membership voting will count for 50%. The same group that was asked to put together the preseason minor league top 40 will get together as a "panel of experts" to vote. This will also count for 50%. In the case of a split decision, I will cast the tiebraking vote based upon the input from the above processes. Thanks in advance for your participation!

How about trading for Upton, then? :D

Your Move?!? I never even noticed that you left our left coast, even though I know it was happening. Goes to show how quickly this summer has gone. How's the new place? New place is great and I'm thrilled to be back in Chicago! Heading to my first Cubs games @ Wrigley in years this weekend. I wish I could say that the game would be more meaningful, but at least I'll be there. :D Enjoy the game. Congrats on the move. Why did your family decide to move? Have your kids lived anywhere other than California? I took a job here in Chicago, so the family moved out here with me. We've been in California for six years, but my 10 year old daughter has seen several moves (most of which she doesn't remember). She was born a Hoosier, spent a few months there, then around 10 months in IL, then three years in TX, then Cali, now back to IL. My 8 year old boy was born in Dallas. It's safe to say that as the one paying the bills, I'm happiest to leave California!

Geez. I just noticed that if I hold on and win this week that I will have 10 starts in week 22. I would have liked to have had those for the playoffs, but I guess I'll take them to help ensure a perfect regular season. And, if I'm not mistaken, that will ensure me 15 starts in the two weeks of the championship round, should I get that far.

Your Move?!? I never even noticed that you left our left coast, even though I know it was happening. Goes to show how quickly this summer has gone. How's the new place? New place is great and I'm thrilled to be back in Chicago! Heading to my first Cubs games @ Wrigley in years this weekend. I wish I could say that the game would be more meaningful, but at least I'll be there. :D

Matt wrote this back in June just before I did my move and I let it slip through the cracks and haven't gotten it posted until now. It's a very interesting article, though, and deserves to be seen!

Wright's two weeks older than Encarnacion and he's hitting .303/.385/.509 playing half his games at Shea. That's your perennial 3B all-star in the NL most likely. Cabrera's younger than both of them and the Marlins have said that he'll be moved back to third when Lowell moves on. And he's hitting .336/.397/.591. Well that might be a while b/c after the 04' season I think Lowell signed a 4 year deal with the Marlins. Lowell has an out-clause in his contract for this season unless the Marlins get a new park approved by the end of the year (not very likely!). Even if he doesn't exercise it, speculation is rampant that the Marlins will dump his contract in the offseason, play Cabrera at 3B, promote Hermida to the OF in 2006 and use Lowell's money to replace Burnett in the rotation or shore up the pen.

It would have been cool if the writer had interviewed Tim re: this site like he did for the DodgerBlues.com site. He actually made a request, but I never was able to synch up with him before the article came out.

Wright's two weeks older than Encarnacion and he's hitting .303/.385/.509 playing half his games at Shea. That's your perennial 3B all-star in the NL most likely. Cabrera's younger than both of them and the Marlins have said that he'll be moved back to third when Lowell moves on. And he's hitting .336/.397/.591.

To be a perennial all-star at 3rd in the NL, he's going to have to be consistently better than Aramis, Rolen, Wright, Cabrera (after Lowell moves on), Ensberg & Glaus. It's simply a pretty tall order to call any 3B prospect a perennial all-star right now given the quality (and fairly young) talent in the league at the position. Now, if you're just counting on him being the Reds' best player and therefore getting their auto-representative, then he just has to be better than Dunn, Griffey, Pena, Kearns & Lopez.

Done. Sorry about the delay.

He also cleared waivers when we tried to pick him up in 2003 from Texas and he blocked the trade.

I would certainly give up a good prospect for him. He will be 35 years old in October and he has 29 saves, 1.29 ERA, .88 WHIP, and .185 BAA and makes about $4 million a year. Also, he strikes me as one of those pitchers that will be around until he is 40-41 years old (maybe not as efficient though). He would be a great addition to the bullpen because of his experience as a closer. Dempster has been great, but he scares the daylights out of me everytime he comes in. Resign Dempster and you have a lefty and a righty with experience as a closer. Sign Wagner and Guardado becomes trade bait or a set-up man. If a deal could be worked out, this is a no-brainer. Remind me again...what were Remlinger's stats like in his age 35 season in Atlanta before we signed him?

Relating to this Nathan, how do you get the split information? Does the team track it? Can you get this info for opposing players? As you know, this sort of information is very useful when evaluating minor leaguers, and yet there is very little of it available to the public. Yeah CP, unfortunately all that info is on a Private Backdoor site that we have to use passwords to get to and they won't even allow us to give the passwords to our local media outlets or beat writers. The Private Stats site is for front office use only to give stats to the coaches and scouts. I can give splits on our players if needed, I have no problem with that. Other than Home-Road, Situational (bases loaded, RISP, RISP & 2outs) Left-Right and Monthly stats, everything I use I track myself...this includes lead-off walks scoring, inherited runners scoring, outfield assists, pick-offs, hit-streaks, multi-hit games, etc. I have excel charts for EVERYTHING....and it takes a while each night/day to update....thank god for interns at home! Is there anyone on the Chiefs that has simply ridiculous R/L splits that we should know about? Pitcher or hitter, really. Thanks! Well here ya go (current players only): vs. Right Bernard .236/2/17 Flowers .237/5/27 Fuld .285/3/27 LH hitter Granato .270/3/19 Harvey .279/18/72 Larsen .239/3/32 Patterson .336/12/52 LH hitter Rick .170/2/15 LH hitter Rivera .250/0/4 Schmidt .234/2/10 Switch Hitter Simokaitis .174/0/6 Smith .243/3/15 Billek .174 Opp avg, 2 HR Blevins .254, 3 LH pitcher Dickson .154, 0 Estrada .336, 6 Gallagher .199, 5 Johnson .279, 4 Jones .388, 1 Layden .241, 2 LH Pitcher Mendez .204, 0 Nolen .236, 1 Phelps .135, 0 Weber .277, 9 Vs. Left Bernard .278/0.6 Flowers .293/2/16 Fuld .268/0/4 LH hitter Granato .333/1/9 Harvey .240/4/16 Larsen .257/1/13 Patterson .318/0/12 LH hitter Rick .172/0/7 LH hitter Rivera .000/0/0 (1 AB) Schmidt .250/0/3 Swith hitter Simokatis .316/0/1 Smith .238/0/3 Billek .216. 0hr Blevins .273, 1 LH pitcher Dickson .361, 0 Estrada .274, 4 Gallagher .200, 3 Johnson .176, 2 Jones .395, 0 Layden .170, 0 LH pitcher Mendez .293, 0 Nolen .196, 0 Phelps .333, 0 Weber .314, 3 as a team we are hitting .298 against LHP and .260 vs. RHP...lefties also hit us better at .262 to .254... Sweet Ginger Brown, it's the motherlode! :) Thanks, Nate. I was really expecting Harvey to have better splits than that versus lefties based upon what I have seen of his swing. I'd expect righties with a good slider to get him consistently, but I'd think he'd eat up lefties pretty well. Goes to show why I'm not a coach, I guess!

There was a time when that was perennial all-star level at 3B. But with the flood of good - great 3B in the game right now, it's not good enough to be an all-star.

Relating to this Nathan, how do you get the split information? Does the team track it? Can you get this info for opposing players? As you know, this sort of information is very useful when evaluating minor leaguers, and yet there is very little of it available to the public. Yeah CP, unfortunately all that info is on a Private Backdoor site that we have to use passwords to get to and they won't even allow us to give the passwords to our local media outlets or beat writers. The Private Stats site is for front office use only to give stats to the coaches and scouts. I can give splits on our players if needed, I have no problem with that. Other than Home-Road, Situational (bases loaded, RISP, RISP & 2outs) Left-Right and Monthly stats, everything I use I track myself...this includes lead-off walks scoring, inherited runners scoring, outfield assists, pick-offs, hit-streaks, multi-hit games, etc. I have excel charts for EVERYTHING....and it takes a while each night/day to update....thank god for interns at home! Is there anyone on the Chiefs that has simply ridiculous R/L splits that we should know about? Pitcher or hitter, really. Thanks!

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this as an option in phpbb.

Tim - Thanks a bunch for the questions! I love the ones that really make me think back! 1. Well the easy answers are Dayton and West Michgan because they are alwyas full and the staffs are huge and they just seem to do EVERYTHING right and they are what the rest of us as a staff aspire to be. However, my favorite is Fox Cities Stadium in Appleton, Wisconsin home to the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. The stadium is 10 years old and all one level. If feels intimate and can get really loud. They have a huge parking lot and since it is the Official State Sport, all fans tailgate hours before and after each game! at a Minor League Baseball game! awesome. Anyway, the press box is right on top of the action, the fans are great, the staff is great and they dont have one of those annoying on-field emcees but still keep the fans in the game with good between inning activities, hot dog tosses, strikeout contests, etc. Unfortunately we only went there once this year and it was the first four games and Northern Wisconsin is about 30 degrees in April! 2. I can check the online numbers and I usually do so in the 5th inning or so if I remember. So I have an idea of how many people listen on Live365.com. I havent seen any numbers from the radio station yet this year. Their signal isn't the strongest in the world so I dont know how many people listen on radio though I am surprised occasionally around town by people talking about listening. 3. Oh man, with this bunch of characters I could write a book. No one real thing stands out in my mind but these guys have so many inside jokes and one-liners that the whole season has just been so funny and so much fun. They ride everyone: each other, the coaches, me, the bus driver, the bat boys, the trainer. It all trickles down from Julio Garcia the manager who is hilarious. Of the moments I can remember and that are clean enough to discuss, Id have to go with either the imitations of Julio tossing the umpire from the game after he had been tossed, or when we saw Patterson and Alberto Garcia sitting in my pre-game chairs talking on the microphones and doing a mock interview mixed in emglish and spanish and in the press box we turned the volume up on the stadium speakers and busted them. 4. Well a bunch have already gone up. I think you should check out Quad Cities OF Nick Stavinoha he really impressed me last weekend in two games. Alexi Casilla of Cedar Rapids just hit over .400 in July and is a burner on the basepaths. The third baseman here in South Bend Agustin Murillo is good. Pitching wise, Mike Ekstrom and Ft Wayne, Matt Elliott the closer in So. Bend (who hopefully we wont see again!), definitely Eric Hurley in Clinton and Mark McCormick in Quad Cities. Though I'm biased, personally I'd pay to watch Patterson, Harvey and Gallagher. I think we have the best trio in the MWL and I cant wait to see how my fellow front office staffers and the players vote for the Chiefs MVP, Prospect of the Year and other awards which we will hand out in the final game on Labor Day. Last season it was a no-brainer with Daric Barton taking everything, but I think the votes are gonna go down to the wire this season. Thanks for the questions, keep them coming, I'm happy to answer anything to give more of an insight to the players, me, or minor league baseball in general! Thanks, that was great!

Thanks for stopping by! 1) I was curious what it was like to play in your home state of Florida this year. Was it a lot of fun to be able to have friends and family come to the park or was it a lot of extra pressure? 2) Not a question, but a compliment here. Every spring when I go to Fitch park, I have seen you staying on the practice field to work on your defense after everyone else leaves. I wanted to let you know that as a baseball fan, I am a huge admirer of yours for that even more than the majestic home runs you hit. 3) Also, I've seen you work very hard during the spring at taking the ball to the opposite field. Has that been something you continue to consciously work on during the season? Thanks again!

Nate, As always, thanks for stopping by here at NSBB and answering our silly questions! 1) Which road park do you like best in the MWL and why? 2) Do you ever get to find out how many people are listening to the broadcast? 3) What's the funniest thing you've seen happen with the Chiefs this year? 4) With the season winding down, what players in the MWL should we make sure we check out while we still have the chance? Thanks again!

In order of preference on that list. Wilkerson Lawton Mench Huff Kearns Church Mackowiak Catalanotto Payton DO NOTHING Wilson I made a slight ammendment in your post, Raw, I hope you don't mind!

Let me know if you can see this, please!

What about sacrifice flies and sacrifice groundouts? There is more than one kind of productive out. Bunting is overused, but moving a batter home on a groundball is truly a productive out. What's wrong with that? Because the situation is so rare that the importance of it is completely overblown. You have to have a runner on 2nd with less than two outs in order to "move a runner over with a ground ball". I wonder what % of AB's occur in this situation?